Benjamin Britten, a lifelong pacifist, was commissioned in 1958 to create a large scale choral work for the dedication of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral — the medieval church was destroyed by Nazi bombs in 1940.

This strange but movingly beautiful amalgam of the Latin Requiem Mass, plus desperately dramatic anti-war poems by Wilfred Owen, who had fallen in World War I, was the result. Symbolically, the piece was created for tenor Peter Pears (England), baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Germany) and soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (Russia).

The Soviets refused to allow Vishnevskaya to appear at the 1963 premiere; her part was superbly sung by the late Heather Harper, though Vishnevskaya performed on the first recording, conducted by the composer.

There have been a number of thrilling recordings since. My favorite is Herbert Kegel’s tempestuous Eastern European performance, but this current set, recorded live at Royal Festival Hall in 2005, has the most evenly-matched soloists.

They compensate for Masur’s coolly compassionate conducting, musical but not as urgently thrilling as Britten’s or Kegel’s. Christine Brewer, a placid singer with a sumptuous tone, is dead in tune, more than you can say for the edgy Vishnevskaya.

I’ve loved Purcell’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary” (1695) since I was a teen, though it was not sung or played with period authenticity in those ancient days. This comprehensive new recording contains two birthday odes (“Come, ye sons of Art” and “Love’s goddess sure was blind”) plus the actual funeral processional music, the funeral anthem and three funeral sentences.

Cleobury’s King’s College Choir, with its sweet trebles and assured countertenors and the AAM’s period instruments — recorders, tenor drum, flatt trumpets, theorbo, gamba, etc. — make as gorgeous a noise as I’ve ever heard in this music.

No, that’s not a typo. John Taverner was the great medieval composer. Sir John Tavener is a contemporary Brit in the minimalist mode, much beloved for his religious scores. This big choral work is a plea for peace in the holy land.

However noble and well-intentioned, it is repetitive, simplistic, harmonically drab. Sir John calls it “a mystical love song,” albeit one without sex appeal. C’mon — even the Verdi Requiem “turns you on.”

Vivaldi’s “Dixit Dominus” was discovered in 2005 in Dresden’s State Library, attributed to another 17th-century Italian, Baldassarre Galuppi; this is its world premiere recording by musicologist Koop’s Dresden group.

If you are a Vivaldi freak, or a completist, you’ll have to have it. I’m much more taken with the three Galuppi pieces that round out the album. He rocks and, as the program notes state, even Haydn may have learned a thing from him.